Internationally acknowledged as one of the world’s most beautiful women, Britt Ekland considers her appearance and health vital to her success. With a strong interest in oriental medicine especially acupuncture and with a brother who works as a homeopathic practitioner she has never looked for advice by Western medicine.

Copyrighted imageCopyright: Used with permission
Ever Wondered sent her out to explore the health scene in LA and look at the differences between Western and Eastern Medicine.

First stop for Britt isn’t in Chinatown, but LA’s West Side…

Britt: The Chinese herbal pharmacy, Herb King, is living proof of the crossover between east and west. It’s run by a western biologist, and caters mainly to non-Asians. There are almost as many things in here as there would be in a pharmacy.

Copyrighted imageCopyright: Used with permission
Herbalist: Often there’s a language and cultural barrier that prevents people from coming into a shop similar to this. Here people get a Chinese medical diagnosis and are prescribed herbal prescriptions, which they then take home and make up into a tea.

Britt : When I take a prescription drug, I know it’s for a specific complaint, but what am I getting when I drink one of these herbal potions?

Herbalist: Chinese medicine uses the idea of the five elements which are; water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. We have all these elements within the system of our body. Chi, or energy, is the idea that energy manifests in all living beings. Sometimes the energy will get blocked, and therefore disease will occur. So we use the herbs in our pharmacopoeia to create the free flow of energy, and bring the energy into harmony, and therefore create health.

Britt: So, just how do they do the diagnosis?

Copyrighted imageCopyright: Used with permission
Herbalist: To understand what’s going on in someone’s body is to compare it to what is happening in nature. There’s climates and seasons, various qualities of heat/cold/damp. To find out what kind of climate someone has going on inside their body, you look at their tongue, take their pulse, and ask detailed questions about their bodily functions.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of traditional Chinese medicine. Britt has been recommended to go and see a Chi Gong Master…

Copyrighted imageCopyright: Used with permission
Britt : Master Jo from China is a martial arts expert. He’s also one of the foremost practitioners of Chi Gong in the west. Chi Gong is an ancient Chinese tradition dating back thousands of years and Master Jo's skills have taken a lifetime to perfect.

He is currently working with Professor Shin Lin, a professor of cell biology, bio-chemistry, and bio-physics, at the University of California, who is researching whether it’s possible to measure Chi with western instruments. He’s hoping to be able to explain its effectiveness in traditional western medical terms. How does a professor of western medicine relate to a Chi master?

Prof. Shin Lin: Well with the University of California at Irvine as a centre of a Complimentary and Alternative Medicine studying this sort of stuff. Essentially we believe in Chi as a type of energy inside the human body, and when it’s flowing freely throughout the body and through the organs then we can tell that you’re healthy. But when something is wrong and there’s a blockage of the Chi (energy), then you would know that there are problems in particular areas.

Copyrighted imageCopyright: Used with permission
What the master does is, he projects his energy on to your body either directly with his hands on to the body or through the heat from his hands and that unblocks the problem areas and keeps things going.

Now, from a bio-medical point of view, we’re still trying to understand what that is. It certainly could be explained for instance, by increasing micro-circulation in the body.

Britt: Is there an instrument which can measure the Chi?

Prof. Shin Lin: We are currently finding this out. First of all there are numerous articles published in China, documenting the use of different instruments that record the Chi. Here at the University of California we have all the state of the art equipment so it is a matter of time before we will find out if there is a specific instrument that can record the Chi.

Britt’s next expert is Dr. Soram Singh Khalsa, a Sikh, and a leading advocate of complimentary health in America. He regularly shuttles between Eastern and Western methods of medicine to better our understanding.

Britt: What does healthy mean?

Dr. Soram Singh Khalsa: The way I like to conceive health is that there’s a spectrum. At one end we have chronic degenerative diseases, cancer being the most extreme example of that. At the other end of the spectrum we have a positive active state of well-being and in the middle there is a grey zone. Unfortunately this grey zone was never taught in medical school. I was taught to identify disease, to detect disease, to diagnose disease and then to treat disease. But this middle zone got completely ignored and neglected and yet the middle zone is where most people in our society are. What’s going on in the middle zone are organs that are run down, or stressed. With Oriental medicine we can identify these weakened organs and through acupuncture and herbal treatments help those organs to heal and to get stronger.

Copyrighted imageCopyright: Used with permission
Britt : Surely there are times when it’s incorrect to use Eastern medicine.

Dr. Soram Singh Khalsa: In a seriously ill person that needs intensive care, it would be inappropriate to use these as a primary source of treatment, but they can be used alongside western medicine. For example if a person breaks their leg. After the cast is put on they might come to a doctor for acupuncture to help with pain and to possibly reduce the swelling. In addition herbal medicines could be very useful in that type of situation.

If you would like to find out more about this subject, here are a few suggestions.

Books you can read

Integrative Medicine: Achieving Wellness through the Best of Eastern and Western Medicial Practices, Kathleen Phalen, Journey Editions, ISBN 1885203616

Dr Soram Singh Khalsa is a Clinical Professor of Medicine and past chairman of the advisory committe for the Environmental Medicine Center of Excellence at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, Arizona. He is a member of the Bureau of Naturopathic Medicine Advisory Council for California and serves as medical director for the East-West Medical Research Institute.

Comments

We invite you to discuss this subject, but remember this is a public forum.Please be polite, and avoid your passions turning into
contempt for others. We may delete posts that are rude or aggressive; or edit posts containing contact details or links to other websites.

Feeds

If you enjoyed this, why not follow a feed to find out when we have new things like it? Choose an RSS feed from the list below. (Don't know what to do with RSS feeds?)
Remember, you can also make your own, personal feed by combining tags from around OpenLearn.

The Open University

The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302). The Open University is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.